Volunteer delivers dinner, coffee — and hope
Hope found Mike Gosling in a parking lot. Homeless and addicted, he was sitting alone when a teenage girl from a Richmond church group sat down beside him and struck up a conversation.
“I was really drunk. I remember nothing she said. But she was wearing a necklace, and I said it was nice, so she gave it to me,” Gosling recalled Saturday, taking a break from his volunteer work at the Union Gospel Mission’s annual Easter dinner to tell his story.
“When I woke up the next morning, I had one thought in my head: There’s gotta be more to life than this.”
Gosling began abusing alcohol as a young teenager, and by his 40s, alcohol and drugs demanded every dollar he earned. He quit his job as a warehouse foreman and was soon living in an abandoned shed in a wooded area.
“I remember eating out of a hotel garbage bin when a family went by,” he said. “I was so ashamed.”
Inspired by the kind stranger in the parking lot, Gosling approached a UGM outreach worker for help and entered an alcohol and drug recovery program.
It’s been eight years since he got sober — and while the 55-year-old man says that easily, life has been anything but easy. The last year, in particular, has been tough. He lost his job and broke up with his fiancée.
“I’ve had every reason to pick up the bottle, but I came here instead and made this part of my routine,” he said.
Gosling worked at UGM for six years and continues to volunteer every weekend and at large events, like Saturday’s Easter dinner, where he served coffee to hundreds of people who came into the East Hastings location for a meal.
UGM served about 3,000 meals in total across Metro Vancouver on Saturday, according to a spokesman.
Gosling also serves meals to homeless people in Richmond once a month, reconnecting with some of the men he used to drink with. He wants to attend college and find work as a counsellor.
“I want to give people hope,” he said. “If I can help just one person, that would be enough for me.”